Corporate IT: Three Reasons to Update Your Career Paths Today

Like all other functions around a big company, IT teams create formal career paths for their employees that outline the knowledge, competencies, and skills needed for an employee to climb up the career ladder. But, unfortunately, few take the time and effort to update them as and when is needed.

Traditionally, this lack of career pathing could make promotion decisions a little harder, but today’s changing business environment means there are now many more reasons to keep formal development career paths up to date; here’s three of the most important.

1. Provide clarity on career trajectories: Companies that have experienced healthy growth often lack a standard way to describe the roles each of their employees play in supporting their business. Inconsistent job titling as well as a rise in M&A transactions, mean IT employees do not have a clear understanding of how their careers develop over time.

   This makes it difficult to benchmark compensation in the market. Standardizing career paths enables career planning conversations and improves transparency into opportunities available.

2. Strengthen strategic workforce planning: To envision the future state of the IT function, managers need to understand what changes to expect in the jobs they have today, and plan for new jobs that will be needed.

   Leading IT teams are rethinking their strategic workforce plans in a context of broad-based digitization. A stable career path framework puts that into practice to show how the present state fits into the future direction and communicates the expected changes to employees.

3. Increase accuracy of project resource allocation: Project and Portfolio Managers that build out IT resource roles in PPM tools need accurate information on what each role is expected to do.

   A clear career framework enables accurate planning and ensures the right resources are allocated and projects are kept running smoothly.